


invisible string

by ginevraweasIey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Feels, Cho Chang is Great, Emotional Hurt, F/F, Implied Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter - Freeform, Implied Harry Potter/Bill Weasley, Implied Harry Potter/Oliver Wood, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 09:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30120969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginevraweasIey/pseuds/ginevraweasIey
Summary: “I barely knew him, Cho.” The words taste bitter in his mouth. Barely knew him. Harry can feel the nerves in his bouncing knee, in his sweaty palms, in the way he keeps swallowing so deeply. Had Cho known this whole time? Had she known, when they were fifteen and trying to make something between them happen? Had she known that, when she kissed him, Harry would only try to remember how Cedric’s lips had tasted?*Cho Chang and Harry Potter meet for afternoon tea. Old feelings are discussed.
Relationships: Cedric Diggory/Harry Potter, Cho Chang/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	invisible string

“You miss him, don’t you?”

Harry chokes on his tea, spitting it back into the cup and hurrying to wipe the mess away with a napkin. Across from him is Cho, her face flat and knowing as she watches him struggle. She is twenty years old as of last week and Harry himself is nineteen. It has been five years since Cedric Diggory was murdered.

“Yes,” Harry says, finally managing to compose himself. He frowns a little to himself. The question had been too blunt, had brought him back to a life he didn’t remember living, those moments with Cedric where he felt like he could taste normalcy. Harry doesn’t know whether he should be upset or angry or at peace with this grief already because it’s been five years and Cedric wasn’t even his boyfriend. He was Cho’s.

“You don’t have to hide it. I remember, in school, you’d hide it.” That’s something that Harry has noticed about Cho, ever since they started to spend time together again. They aren’t anything more than friends, something they have to make clear whenever they were spotted together. Having tea with her has only shown Harry that Cho can read him like an open book. She can read anyone.

“I barely knew him, Cho.” The words taste bitter in his mouth.  _ Barely knew him _ . Harry can feel the nerves in his bouncing knee, in his sweaty palms, in the way he keeps swallowing so deeply. Had Cho known this whole time? Had she known, when they were fifteen and trying to make something between them happen? Had she known that, when she kissed him, Harry would only try to remember how Cedric’s lips had tasted?

He couldn’t remember the taste anymore.

“I don’t believe that, not for a second. I never took you as a coward, Gryffindor,” says Cho. She’s twirling her spoon in her tea, staring intently at Harry across from her. He feels horribly exposed under her gaze, like she knows something about him that he himself doesn’t.

“‘M not a coward,” Harry replies, though it comes out as a cracked mumble. He wonders if Cho is finally punishing him for being a prick to her four years ago.

“Then just tell the truth!” Finally, she shows emotion. Her voice cracks and gets louder and her gaze is piercing, “Just tell me.” Harry thinks she might be angry, but the volume in her voice is not accompanied by a change in expression. She’s still just staring, taking him apart, bit by bit, until all of the horrible, ugly, hidden parts of him come tumbling out. 

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” Harry is staring to feel angry. Cho doesn’t have the right to crack him open like this. Not in public. Not anywhere. It’s not her place. The heat is rising in his cheeks. 

“Do you want me to tell you that I loved him? That I wanted him to have me completely? I was  _ fourteen _ , okay? I didn’t even know what love was.”

“You don’t learn about love at a certain age, Harry, come on. You’re just trying to get me to shut up.”

“So, then, shut up.”

“No.”

Harry hasn’t talked to someone like this in a while. She doesn’t seem upset with him, but there’s something unreadable in her face. Harry can’t tell if it’s grief or acceptance or something completely different. It’s strange, seeing her this way. He can remember sitting across from her while she sobbed, but never with this sober expression.

“I think I could have loved him.” A heavy pause. Cho sips her tea. “If I had more time.”

“You kissed him, didn’t you? At the ball.” Harry feels shame and guilt rise in his chest. She’d seen them. Outside, in the courtyard, snow falling in light sprinkles on their robes, when Cedric had cupped Harry’s face in his hands and kissed him hard and perfect. Harry nods slowly. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally says. He isn’t, though, not really, because who could ever be sorry that they were able to exist at the same time as Cedric? Who could ever be sorry that they knew him? That they came close to loving him?

Cho chokes back something like a laugh. She looks beautiful in the delicate sunlight, her hair almost blue, the gloss on her lips shining. Harry wishes he could’ve loved  _ her _ . It would’ve been so much easier, wouldn’t it?

“You would look for him, all the time. After. You didn’t think anyone was looking, but I was. I saw you looking for him and I saw you remember that he was dead, every day.” 

“Why are you telling me this?” The hairs on his arm stand straight up. Harry feels naked and raw and exposed. He didn’t think anyone knew him like that. 

“Ginny.”

Her name shakes Harry away from his saccharine memory. She is the in-between, the thin line between the person Harry was when Cedric was alive and the person he is now. His girlfriend, the woman he will marry one day.

“Does she know?” Harry’s heart lurches. He had never told her. Not about Cedric or Oliver Wood or Draco Malfoy or her eldest brother or the muggle when he was sixteen. She would still love him, he knows, but there is something so humiliating about being known. He needs something for himself.

“No, she doesn’t,” says Cho. She stares at him with something like pity now. “She was mine, the way Cedric was yours.” At once, Harry understands. It isn’t pity nor is it judgement. It’s understanding. It’s family.   


The silence suffocates them for a moment. Harry thinks he might die right there.

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry about it all, Harry. I really, really am. You both deserved better than what you got.” The tears come at once, silent and grief-stricken and aching. Harry wishes more than anything that things were different.

“Thank you. For telling me,” he says, though he isn’t sure if he’s actually grateful. He wishes he didn’t know about Cho and Ginny, and he wishes Cho didn’t know about he and Cedric. 

Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimes the hour. Cho scoots her chair back, still looking at Harry like that. 

“I have to go. Luna will be expecting me soon,” Cho says. She comes closer to Harry and cups his face in her hands, the way Cedric had, the way Ginny does now. She kisses his cheek and stares at him long and hard, something unspoken passing between them. They’re the same, always will be, wishing everything was different.

“I’ll send her your love,” Harry calls as she goes to leave. She smiles at him brightly, her eyes glassy, before the door shuts behind her.

Harry sits alone for another moment. He pulls his wallet out from his back pocket and flips through all the little folds, searching desperately for something. The photograph, tucked away in between spare muggle cash. 

He’s laughing in the photo, his head thrown back a little to expose the smooth pale skin of his neck. Still in his tournament uniform, his face singed a little, he looks beautiful. Harry smiles to himself. Cedric was his. He’d been his, for that single moment in time. 

“Ced,” whispers Harry, running his hand in his hair. “I miss you today, love.”

In the photo, Cedric beams up at him, mouths something that looks like, “You too,” and returns to his original position. 

Harry leaves two galleons on the table and goes home, the photo returned to its spot in his wallet, his heart somewhere between full and empty, feeling known by someone for the first time in his life. 


End file.
